RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: And that -- I mean, that is a -- it`s a psychological shift that they`re asking for, from leaders as well as from us. But it`s deep stuff. And I don`t have a lot of faith in this president to handle things at that level.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": I think the most promising signs are things that we`re seeing from local levels and civil society.
MADDOW: Yes, state and local governments doing this without guidance from the federal government in terms of when stuff should be shut down.
Well, we`re heading to the start of the speech right now. We are preparing to hear from the president in the Oval Office.
In terms of the president`s choice to be giving an Oval Office address here, the president`s choose to speak from the Oval as a way of signaling gravity of a moment, seriousness of a national response in recent times and Oval Office address have become pretty rare.
President Obama, eight years in the White House, gave three Oval Office addresses total, the first one on the catastrophic Deep Water Horizon oil spill. President Bush, likewise, served eight years, President George W. Bush, he actually delivered a half dozen Oval Office addresses, his first was on the night of the 9/11 attacks.
Since President Trump has been in office, he has spoken from the Oval only once before. And that was looking back at it, kind of hard to see that it deserved it. It was before a government shutdown over funding for a wall on the Mexican border.
Well, tonight`s address comes amid a cascade of closures. Again, these are decisions that have largely been made, as Chris was saying, at the state and local level, as those officials are making their own decisions about what ought to be shut down, what schools ought to be closed, and when, and what workplaces ought to be closed and when, what events ought to be stopped and when. This all happening as fears about the coronavirus, fears about the economy, have begun to take hold.
The president will address those fears now.
My fellow Americans, tonight, I want to speak with you about our nation`s unprecedented response to the coronavirus outbreak that started in China and is now spreading throughout the world.
Today, the World Health Organization officially announced that this is a global pandemic.
We have been in frequent contact with our allies, and we are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people.
This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens, and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus.
From the beginning of time, nations and people have faced unforeseen challenges, including large-scale and very dangerous health threats. This is the way it always was and always will be. It only matters how you respond, and we are responding with great speed and professionalism.
Our team is the best anywhere in the world. At the very start of the outbreak, we instituted sweeping travel restrictions on China and put in place the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years. We declared a public health emergency and issued the highest level of travel warning on other countries as the virus spread its horrible infection.
And taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States than are now present in Europe.
The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hotspots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.
After consulting with our top government health professionals, I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans.
To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight. These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground.
There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings, and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing. These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom.
At the same time, we are monitoring the situation in China and in South Korea. And, as their situation improves, we will reevaluate the restrictions and warnings that are currently in place for a possible early opening.
Earlier this week, I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.
We are cutting massive amounts of red tape to make antiviral therapies available in record time. These treatments will significantly reduce the impact and reach of the virus.
Additionally, last week, I signed into law an $8.3 billion funding bill to help CDC and other government agencies fight the virus and support vaccines, treatments, and distribution of medical supplies. Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day. We are moving very quickly.
The vast majority of Americans: The risk is very, very low. Young and healthy people can expect to recover fully and quickly if they should get the virus. The highest risk is for elderly population with underlying health conditions. The elderly population must be very, very careful.
In particular, we are strongly advising that nursing homes for the elderly suspend all medically unnecessary visits. In general, older Americans should also avoid nonessential travel in crowded areas.
My administration is coordinating directly with communities with the largest outbreaks, and we have issued guidance on school closures, social distancing, and reducing large gatherings.
Smart action today will prevent the spread of the virus tomorrow.
Every community faces different risks and it is critical for you to follow the guidelines of your local officials who are working closely with our federal health experts -- and they are the best.
For all Americans, it is essential that everyone take extra precautions and practice good hygiene. Each of us has a role to play in defeating this virus. Wash your hands, clean often-used surfaces, cover your face and mouth if you sneeze or cough, and most of all, if you are sick or not feeling well, stay home.
To ensure that working Americans impacted by the virus can stay home without fear of financial hardship, I will soon be taking emergency action, which is unprecedented, to provide financial relief. This will be targeted for workers who are ill, quarantined, or caring for others due to coronavirus.
I will be asking Congress to take legislative action to extend this relief.
Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we have the greatest economy anywhere in the world, by far.
Our banks and financial institutions are fully capitalized and incredibly strong. Our unemployment is at a historic low. This vast economic prosperity gives us flexibility, reserves, and resources to handle any threat that comes our way.
This is not a financial crisis. This is just a temporary moment of time that we will overcome together as a nation and as a world.
However, to provide extra support for American workers, families, and businesses, tonight, I am announcing the following additional actions: I am instructing the Small Business Administration to exercise available authority to provide capital and liquidity to firms affected by the coronavirus.
Effective immediately, the SBA will begin providing economic loans in affected states and territories. These low-interest loans will help small businesses overcome temporary economic disruptions caused by the virus. To this end, I am asking Congress to increase funding for this program by an additional $50 billion.
Using emergency authority, I will be instructing the Treasury Department to defer tax payments, without interest or penalties, for certain individuals and businesses negatively impacted. This action will provide more than $200 billion of additional liquidity to the economy.
Finally, I am calling on Congress to provide Americans with immediate payroll tax relief. Hopefully they will consider this very strongly.
We are at a critical time in the fight against the virus. We made a life- saving move with early action on China. Now we must take the same action with Europe. We will not delay. I will never hesitate to take any necessary steps to protect the lives, health, and safety of the American people. I will always put the wellbeing of America first.
If we are vigilant -- and we can reduce the chance of infection, which we will -- we will significantly impede the transmission of the virus. The virus will not have a chance against us.
No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States. We have the best economy, the most advanced healthcare, and the most talented doctors, scientists, and researchers anywhere in the world.
We are all in this together. We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family.
As history has proven time and time again, Americans always rise to the challenge and overcome adversity.
Our future remains brighter than anyone can imagine. Acting with compassion and love, we will heal the sick, care for those in need, help our fellow citizens, and emerge from this challenge stronger and more unified than ever before.
God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you.
MADDOW: President Trump giving a rare Oval Office address on the subject of the coronavirus. About 11 minutes in the Oval Office there, the president, with a sort of strange affect, he doesn`t have an easy time reading from the teleprompter, it`s got to be stressful for anybody to give a speech from the Oval Office from a teleprompter like that but the president seeming to struggle a little bit to get the words out.
But there`s some significant news on what the president just announced. The United States is suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. He said that will go into effect Friday at midnight, he said there will be exceptions. He didn`t spell them out. But he talked about people who are adequately screened will be excepted from that, and something about cargo, it wasn`t clear, but he said there would be exceptions and then he added that there would be an exception for the U.K.
So, travel from Europe will be suspended to the United States for the next 30 days. There will be exceptions, they`re woolly, but specifically the U.K. will be exempted from that.
I`m -- not to single out the U.K. except for the fact that the president has. The last numbers that I saw from the U.K., it`s like it is -- has been an island in terms of being isolated from the crisis. It is technically an island. But they`ve got cases, they`ve got 456 cases, slightly lesser than the half that we`ve got but significantly smaller population, eight deaths I think reportedly already as of the U.K., and why they have been exempted from this otherwise radical, potentially unprecedented action, I don`t know.
Let`s bring into the conversation now, once again, my friend Chris Hayes, host of "ALL IN" and also, Ron Klain. Ron Klain had a key role in the Obama administration who was put in charge by President Obama in response to the Ebola epidemic and he also been chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden.
Ron, I`ve been planning on having you here for a long time tonight, and it is fortuitous that you are here on a night when we have a surprise Oval Office address from the president.
Let me ask you about your top line response to a travel suspension from Europe.
RON KLAIN, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE EBOLA CZAR: Well, I want to see what it looks like. I mean, the president boasts of the travel ban he put on from China several months ago. There were 13 exceptions to that ban. And the fact of the matter remain, obviously the disease came here from China.
MADDOW: Yes.
KLAIN: For example, the ban was a very business-friendly ban. It didn`t prevent people from bringing boatloads of goods and Chinese crews to deliver those boatloads of goods and you heard a hint of that in the European travel ban tonight. Of course, it doesn`t ban Americans from coming back, after some restrictions, that`s a lot of the transit back and forth. So, I think there`s a lot of bluster in these travel bans. There`s so far hasn`t been much public health results in these travel bans and the fundamental point here, Rachel, is this -- is this disease is here. We don`t know how much it`s here because we haven`t tested to find out how much it`s here, but it`s here.
And restricting foreign travel may slow the pace of the further spread here, but the president should have focused tonight on what he is doing in this country to protect the American people from this disease that is here already and we didn`t hear much about that tonight.
MADDOW: Chris?
HAYES: You know, the expression, when all you have is a hammer and everything looks like a nail. When all you have is a wall, everything looks like an invasion, and that is the way they approached it from the beginning.
We have reporting that inside of the White House, that there was sort of self congratulatory about the president banning travel from China, even though there would be huge loopholes. They thought that would mean it wouldn`t come here. That was some of the complacency that they`ve had.
It is profoundly worrying to me, the president is still talking about this in the way that he talks about the migrant caravan, about some foreign invasion that can be kept out with strong measures. It`s in the country and transmitting now. We are on the epidemic curve of the country of Italy, the place where he`s banning travelers from. It may be at the margin smart or not, to do the travel ban, it is not the issue.
I mean, correct me if I`m wrong, but spending all day talking public health folks, and epidemiologists for the last week, there are dramatic steps that need to be taken and coordinated and taking a lead from the federal government on social distancing and disruption of daily life that was, he didn`t make more than 1/20 of that speech.
MADDOW: I will say, I don`t mean to fixate on the U.K. exception, but that feels like the exception that proves the rule that proves the irrationality of what he`s doing and just looking at numbers, again, confirmed cases from various European countries which are now going to be subject to a travel ban. Countries like Belgium have fewer cases than the U.K. does, Austria, Portugal, Ireland, Slovenia, Romania, Germany -- I mean, Georgia, all of these countries have fewer cases than the U.K., and they`ll be banned but the U.K. is all right to send people here.
KLAIN: Look, I think part of this, Rachel, is the classic Trump distraction tactic. He wants to see progressives debate the travel ban so on and so forth, and not come after where he has failed. We have tested five people out of a million in this country. In Korea, they tested 2,000 out of every million in their country. There is no reason when South Korea doesn`t have technology we don`t have or health care system we don`t have, or anything we don`t have.
It is a failure on the leadership of the Trump administration. He is doing anything he can to move the conversation elsewhere and talk about something else, and not focus to the fact that even tonight, even in that Oval Office address, all he can say about testing is, we`re going to do more of it, sometime --
MADDOW: Yes.
KLAIN: -- some number of people.
MADDOW: We`re getting to it.
KLAIN: We`re getting there.
That`s job one. That`s job number one.
MADDOW: It also struck me to hear the president bluntly say for the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very, very low. Assuring Americans thought you`re not going to get it.
Meanwhile, what we`re hearing from public health folks is, we should prepare that in epidemiological terms, it`s quite likely you might get it.
HAYES: Right.
MADDOW: And that`s the sort of thing we need to plan for and we need to be planning our capacity, our public health capacity as a country to deal with that.
KLAIN: Right. I mean, our health care system, as wonderful as it is, has very limited capacity. We have a million hospital bed capacity and 700 to 800,000 of them are full.
It does not take much of an epidemic to overwhelm those systems, to have happen here what is happening in Italy, in northern Italy, and I think that again -- once again, you heard the president make some slight references of this tonight, but if -- I think if a competent president giving that address, would have been first and foremost about fixing the testing problem and getting our health care system ready for this influx of cases.
HAYES: He also just to -- you know, in terms of the way he`s approached this primarily is an economic issue and in the meetings he`s had with various CEOs and connected industry groups, he announced what it sounded like a $200 billion tax deferral, on the industries.
MADDOW: Yes, under emergency power he will tell the treasury to defer tax payments for individuals and business -- certain individuals and businesses.
KLAIN: Yes.
HAYES: Yes. Again, there`s a real question here, about what the actual economic relief looks like. From an efficacy standpoint, is what is it actually happening people, and from a distributional standpoint and frankly from a corruption standpoint in terms of what the president and his donors are connected to.
MADDOW: Is that fair?
KLAIN: I think it is fair. I mean, again, always with Trump, it`s not what he says, it is what he does, and we need to see who will benefit from the tamp deferrals and where the money is going, you know, given his track record, it`s not unfair to ask those questions tonight.
MADDOW: All right. We`re going to take a quick break. Ron, I have lots more questions for you.
Chris, I thank for letting me step on your real estate.
HAYES: Thank you. No, thank you for --
MADDOW: And having me here.
Again, the president concluding an oval office address on coronavirus. It was a weird one.
We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: The government of Brazil has a relatively new very, very, very right wing bombastic, new president and a radical new right wing government. The press minister in that government, sort of minister for communications, is himself a controversial senior official. In Brazil last month, the federal police in Brazil announced he was under investigation for embezzlement and serious corruption allegation. He`s accused of self dealing from his position in government.
That combination of factors about a foreign leader makes it seem almost inevitable that a very, very right wing, allegedly super corrupt, very controversial official like that would naturally end up this past weekend at Mar-a-Lago. Where else?
The press minister of the Brazilian government was in Mar-a-Lago this weekend. He brought with him a make Brazil great again hat. He was photographed meeting with the president. He gave him one of those hats. The president`s holding it.
You can see him there in the picture today. Their arms pressed against each other, big smiles from both of them.
Today, that Brazilian government official has been quarantined and is waiting for results of a coronavirus test according to local press in Brazil. He is suspected of having the virus.
Again, that was him at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend, Saturday, with the president of the United States.
The president`s new White House chief of staff is also under quarantine, as we speak. As is this Republican congressman who rode on Air Force One with the president on Monday. As is this Republican congressman who shook hands with the president, wrong guy, Doug Collins is who we want, this Republican congressman shook hands with the president on Friday and met him face to face.
The president is in his 70s. He`s 73 years old. By virtue of that age, that puts him at political risk for serious illness. If he, God forbid, ever actually contracted the coronavirus, the president does seem to have had a lot of face to face contact with a lot of people who have been exposed to the virus, even just over the past week or so.
It`s one of the sort of eerie things about this rapidly accelerating global pandemic, that the physical person of the president, not just as a leader, but as a vulnerable person himself, and potentially a vector of transmission himself, is part of what we have to think about in our national news. Even tonight, as the president gave a rare oval office address, announcing that elderly people need to be particularly careful and should avoid unnecessary travel, even as the president announced tonight that his latest action on coronavirus will be banning travel from Europe to the United States starting Friday and inexplicably banning U.K. from that ban.
It is inexplicable to ban the U.K. from that ban because the U.K. has nearly 500 cases of its own, and a bunch of deaths. So, nobody knows why he would allow travel from the U.K. and not from any other European countries, including countries who have fewer cases than that. But that`s what he announced live from the Oval Office moments ago.
Today, the sergeants-at-arms for the House and Senate announced they`d called off tours of the U.S. Capitol. People come from all over the country, all over the world to do those tours. Those were off for the time being. State Department also announced today they will eliminate all travel for State Department personnel unless it is considered to be, quote, mission critical.
After the city of Washington, D.C. declared a public health emergency today, all of the Episcopal churches in the D.C. area announced that they will close, at least for a couple of weeks. This means Episcopal churches in Northern Virginia and in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland, even the National Cathedral, will close, which is inside D.C. city limits.
In New York City today, they canceled the St. Patrick`s Day parade. It had been scheduled for next week. As we reported last night in the middle of our election coverage, in the great state of Michigan last night, they reported their first cases of coronavirus. The governor declaring a state of emergency today, the state Supreme Court in Michigan said all jury trials, all civil trials and criminal trials that have juries in the state of Michigan should be adjourned, should be put off for the duration of the state of emergency unless there is actually a person being held in jail awaiting that trial, those jury trials will all be put off.
Again, those are state courts in Michigan. Not federal courts. But I believe for the first time we`ve seen that kind of a closure around the country. Today in Congress, one the nation`s most trusted public health officials, Tony Fauci, of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases at NIH, Fauci was asked by a seemingly sort of annoyed Republican congressman from Wisconsin to please give his perspective on how bad this is all going to get in this country, and what we should try to do rationally to improve our prospects here.
The line of question quickly and, sort of, oddly, turned to basketball.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. GLENN GROTHMAN (R-WI): Based upon the currents trajectory how many people do you think will get this new virus and how many people do you think will die?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGIES AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I cannot predict and that`s --
GROTHMAN: I know you cannot predict. But we have the graph, we have the beginning of the graph, we know this is going to go up, we have the experience of China, we have the experience of Italy.
FAUCI: Yes.
GROTHMAN: Can you -- can you give us some projections?
FAUCI: It is going to be totally dependent upon how we respond to it. So I can`t give you a number. If we now sit back complacently --
GROTHMAN: I`m not asking you to be complacent. I`m asking for a realistic -- I mean, that`s what the public is looking for --
FAUCI: I can`t give you a realistic number until we put into the factor of how we respond. If we are complacent and don`t do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up. And be involved in many, many millions. If we talk to contain, we could flatten it. So there`s no number answer to your question, until we act upon it.
GROTHMAN: I`ll give you a question that nobody talks about, every night, they play like, I don`t know, eight to ten NBA games and nobody talks about shutting them down. Is the NBA under reacting?
FAUCI: We would recommend that they not be large crowds. If that means not having any people in the audience, while the NBA plays, so be it. But as a public health official, anything that has large crowds is something that would give a risk to spread.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: We would recommend that there not be large crowds. Anything that has large crowds is something that would give a risk to spread. Fauci says if that means not having any people in the audience when the NBA plays, so be it.
We sort of knew we were heading there but there it is. Senior NIH official saying there shouldn`t be large crowds in the United States anymore.
We as a country should no longer have events with large crowds, including professional sporting events, shy tell you, just as we got on the air tonight, the Oklahoma Thunder was due to be hosting the Utah Jazz, they had issued a 30-minute delay for the start of that game, and then ultimately they postponed that game tonight. So that NBA game is off. That is just happening moments ago.
Soon after, Dr. Fauci`s comments today, about basketball and large crowds in Congress, the NCAA -- the NCAA announced that this year`s March Madness, NCAA basketball tournaments, both the men`s games and the women`s games, will be played without audiences there to watch those games.
And you know, it`s not just this Oklahoma Thunder, Utah Jazz game getting postponed tonight. It looks like other NBA franchises are now tipping over into caution on these matters.
Today, the mayor of San Francisco instituted a ban on gatherings of more than a thousand people, making clear that that explicitly includes Golden State Warriors games. Golden State Warriors will tomorrow play against the Brooklyn Nets. And that game is scheduled to go on. But there will be nobody in the audience.
Just south of San Francisco, Santa Clara County, they`re banning all gatherings of a thousand people as of midnight last night. That will include San Jose Sharks hockey games, among many other things.
Governor of Washington state today, Jay Inslee, announcing that in three hard-hit counties of his state, King County, Snohomish County and Pierce County, from here on out, they will ban, the government will ban gatherings of more than 250 people. All Seattle schools are also being shut down for two weeks.
New York today, the governor announced that City University of New York, CUNY, and State university of New York campuses, SUNY campuses, will all be shut down.
And whether or not these types of actions by state and local officials feel draconian to you, American officials are still playing at the very low end of the kinds of interventions in daily life that may be tried at some point, that may be necessary to try to steer this pandemic away from its worst case trajectories. In recent days, we have seen Italy, for example, go from trying to quarantine the whole northern part of the country, to ordering a nationwide quarantine of everyone in the country, tens of millions of people ordered by their government, all Italian citizens ordered by their government to stay inside and avoid gatherings of any kind. Weddings and funerals, banned.
As of today, the Italian government has gone a step further, ordering the closure of all stores of every kind other than pharmacies and food stores. Think about what the Italian economy is going to look like within days.
And the upward curve of the outbreak in Italy, just looking at the raw numbers there, shows you why the government there is taking these severely draconian -- these draconian measures, right? But the upward curve of the epidemic in Italy is also a cautionary tale, particularly for us, about what exponential growth really looks like, in an epidemic, where the virus is such that every infected person on average is infected two to three others.
The math with an epidemic like that is terrible. It`s devastating. I mean, look at Italy, January 31st, Italy had two people known to be infected and within a week, that had risen to three people. Two weeks after that, they were up to 17 people. And three days later, by February 24th, 219 people. Four days later, February 28th, 821 cases.
Just over a week later, March 6th, 3,916 cases. And four days later, as of yesterday, it`s 10,149 cases, and that`s yesterday. Today, it`s up to 12,462 cases.
And that`s the epidemiological mushroom cloud exploding in Italy. And you know, it`s not like Italy has had its head buried in the sand. Italy closed schools. Italy canceled large gatherings. And we saw the sports matches in empty sports stadiums and they did it, they didn`t tinker around the interventions as they saw their numbers starting to rise and now, Italy is in a nationwide border to border lockdown, as they try desperately to at least slow the spread.
Imagine an order in this country to close every retail establishment in the country that was not a pharmacy or a food store. That`s the order from the Italian government tonight and a nation of 60 million people.
And every country is different. And surveillance methods are different. But the virus appears to be behaving the same pretty much everywhere. And so, we can see the pattern of how the virus spreads, how numbers go up. I mean, look at Washington state, here in the U.S., February 26th, they had one case. A week later, March 3rd, they had 31 cases, and the day after that, March 4th, 43 cases, less than a week later, March 9th, 166 cases. That was two days ago. Today, there`s 366 cases and climbing.
Washington state announcing five new deaths just today. All associated with nursing homes, and long-term care facilities. We spoke with the Washington Governor Jay Inslee on the show the other day and I asked him about that, at that point, 100 plus cases in the state and he said, yes, epidemiologically what we think we probably got is closer to a thousand cases which within seven weeks we expect Washington state to have 64,000 cases, in that one state.
In the United States, more broadly, we don`t know, because our government still hasn`t gotten it together to test people, at any noticeable level, still. South Korea has been testing 10,000 people a day, since February. We found out about our first cases around the same time that South Korea did. They`re casting -- they`re testing 10,000 people a day and have been since last month. We still haven`t tested 10,000 people total over the entire course of this epidemic in this country. We`ve got more than six times their population. So imagine how big our mushroom cloud can get.
But the federal government, the Trump administration, botching the rollout of testing for this virus, it continues to set the United States apart. FT, "The Financial Times" in London today put out this graph showing how well countries are doing testing for the virus, testing, of course, the first crucial step in identifying cases, isolating and treating people with the virus, tracing their contacts to stop the virus from spreading further.
And you can see, you know, South Korea at the top there, absolute rock star. Look where we are on this. The only reason that France is below us because they`re only publishing the rate of testing they`re doing every day, not the total cumulative number of tests they have done. France says they`re doing about a thousand tests a day, which is way above us, we should be so lucky to get near that kind of a pace, and we`re a country of 300 million people that`s already got a thousand cases and dozens of deaths.
But even with basically zero usable information on the size of the American epidemic, because of next to zero American testing, because of the failure by the federal government on that front, the numbers would do have are still bad. They`re still rapidly trending upward. I mean, from the publicly available data that we`ve got a week ago, we Americans are at 160 cases, over the weekend, we were at 545 cases, as of today, we`re at more than 1100 case, and again, that`s just what is known. That`s just interest from this sliver, a tiny, tiny sliver of people who can manage to get tested.
The attending physician of Congress on the U.S. Supreme Court told Senate staff yesterday in a closed door meeting, first reported by "Axios", since confirmed by NBC News, attending physician of Congress told Senate staff, he expects at the end of the day, ultimately, the number of Americans who contract coronavirus will be in the range of 70 million -- 70 million at the low end, 150 million on the high end.
Which means if it continues to be the case, that 15 to 20 percent of people who get this virus end up seriously ill, and potentially needing hospitalization. If those estimates are right, that would mean we would be looking for hospital beds for somewhere between 10 million and 30 million Americans.
Thirty million people requiring hospitalization for serious illness? On top of all of the other things we need to use hospital beds for in this country? Thirty million people? Thirty million Americans?
I mean, and the kinds of serious illness that you get from this disease, I mean, we`re talking about, you know, potentially intensive care beds, intubation, being put in a ventilator and all of that, 10 to 30 million people, do we have the capacity to do that?
If we know now that is what is coming, how do we even start to create the capacity for that?
After the Ebola crisis in 2014, President Obama created something called the Directorate for Global Health Security and Bio Defense at the National Security Council. It`s basically pandemic preparedness as a White House office.
President Trump got rid of it, fired the guy who was running it, fired his whole team, got rid of him, didn`t replace him. Got rid of the whole global health security unit at the National Security Council and at Homeland Security as well and even at the Pentagon.
His global health security teams existed. They were put in place for a reason. The U.S. government had seen fit because of the experience with Ebola and other novel challenges, to set those things up, inside the federal government, so we wouldn`t be starting from zero, so as to prepare us for a moment like this. President Trump in inexplicably, affirmatively moved to fire those people and get rid of that function of the federal government for reasons that remained unclear and unexplained even this far into this current and absolutely petrifying crisis.
The president tonight announcing a ban on European travel. Nobody will be allowed to travel from Europe to the United States starting Friday unless you`re coming from the U.K., in which case it`s fine, each even though the U.K. isn`t any less susceptible to the virus than any other European country, which is now going to be facing the ban.
We`re joined next by somebody who knows what the federal government is supposed to be doing in a situation like this because he used to command those efforts in a previous administration. That`s next. Stay with us.
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MADDOW: Breaking news tonight, I was just talking about the odd role that basketball is playing in our national confrontation of the reality of the coronavirus crisis, and the need to take actions that affect daily life, to limit it, that came up in a pointed way in Congress today, when the NIH`s Tony Fauci, one of the most respected health officials in America, and one of the most recognizable said, when asked about the NBA playing games in front of stadiums full of people said the U.S. should avoid at this point large gatherings and he said if that means the NBA should play in front of no fans, so be it.
Well, since we have been on the air tonight, we had a development along that line. The NBA has now announced the suspension of their season. I`m just going to read you their press release.
The NBA announced that a player on the Utah Jazz has preliminary tested positive for COVID-19. The test results was reported shortly prior to the tipoff of tonight`s game between the Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma. At that time, tonight`s game was canceled. The affected player was not in the arena.
The NBA is suspending game play following the conclusion of tonight`s schedule of games until further notice. The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next step for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic. So, again, moments ago, we heard that game had been delayed and then called off. We now know why it was. Again, the Utah jazz player preliminary tested positive. That game off tonight. The NBA season has been suspended.
Also since we`ve been on the air tonight, somebody you know by name, Tom Hanks, academy award winning actor tom hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, have announced that they have both tested positive for coronavirus. Tom hanks announcing it tonight in a tweet, saying the couple, they`re in Australia right now, they began to feel tired, colds, body ache, slight fever and Rita Wilson apparently additionally had some chills, quote, Rita had some chills that came and went.
Quote, to play things right as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the coronavirus and were found to be positive. Well, now, what to do next? The medical officials have protocols that must be followed. We Hanks` will be tested, observed and isolated as long as public health and safety requires. Not much more to it than a one day at a time approach, no. We will keep the world posted.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were in Australia because Mr. Hanks is about to start production on a new film there.
Tonight, Warner Brothers was making that movie, a statement about it, saying quote: The health and safety of our company members is always our top priority. We are taking precautions to protect everyone who works on our productions around the world.
On a night like tonight, a person you would probably like to hear from is someone who has actually run an American national response to a viral outbreak and knows what the government can do in a crisis like this. We`re now by Ron Klain, who`s chief of staff to Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore. He was the presidentially appointed coordinator of the Ebola response in the Obama White House.
Ron, thank you very much for joining us tonight. It`s good to have you here.
KLAIN: Thanks for having me, Rachel.
MADDOW: They appreciate you stepping in to help us responds to the president`s Oval Office address. Now that you had a couple of minutes to absorb what the proposed and what he said, let me ask you what was most important -- most interesting about what he announced.
KLAIN: Well, I think the unevenness and inexplicability of this travel restriction, which we talked about a little bit earlier, really starts to stick out at you. The exemption of the U.K., even though there are 12 countries in Europe, actually with fewer cases than the U.K., the fact that people can travel to and from Korea. There is a warning against it, but it`s not banned. Korea has the second most cases in the entire world.
MADDOW: Wait, so the president has been bragging on the travel ban that he instituted related to China.
KLAIN: China, yes.
MADDOW: He has now instituted a travel ban for travel from Europe to the U.S., excluding the U.K.
KLAIN: Yes.
MADDOW: But there has never been a travel ban in terms of South Korea to the U.S.?
KLAIN: Correct. And I think, and again, even with the China travel ban, with the European travel ban, there has been a lot of exceptions to it, exceptions for commerce, to allow businesses to ship things back and forth, with the people that come along with the goods.
And so, these travel bans, I think they do have some effect, at slightly slowing the pace, but they aren`t a virtual wall to protect our country. We`re seeing that. The disease is here. It`s spreading.
And I think the problem was this. It gave us -- it gave the president the false sense of security, or maybe trying to convey a false sense of security. And if it bought time, that time was squandered.
I look back on this, Rachel and what we will see, we knew this was coming in December, we knew it was coming in January, the president talked tough on travel and in the meantime we weren`t getting ready on testing, we weren`t getting our health care facilities ready. We weren`t doing the things we needed to do knowing this was coming.
We had the warning. That`s the -- that`s the real tragedy here. We had a warning that this was coming and the kind of numbers that were coming and we are still sitting here having a conversation here about testing.
Tom Hanks got tested because he is in Australia. If Tom Hanks was in New York, it would be almost impossible for him to get tested.
MADDOW: It is so enraging that the U.S. testing situation is, continues to be a fiasco this far into this.
KLAIN: Yes.
MADDOW: And I have read everything I think that has been written about what went wrong and how it was bollixed up.
KLAIN: Yes.
MADDOW: But given it has, and what a crisis for this country that it likely will not be available testing and I keep coming back to what I know is a stupid question about it, why can`t we just copy the tests and the testing protocols that some of our closest allies around the world are using?
I mean, the president just exempted the U.K. from the European travel ban. Well, the health minister in the British government has just tested positive for coronavirus and asymptomatic. The U.K. government just announced they`re going to up their testing rate by 500 percent. We seem to be stuck in neutral and unable to improve on this terrible situation.
KLAIN: Yes, it`s a failure of leadership by the president and his task force.
I mean, look, we have -- and so what the White House has done the past week is essentially said we`re going to privatize testing. We`re going to allow big testing labs, Quest and LabCorp, to run the tests. And so, if you go to a doctor and want to get tested, they`re going to send your tests to one of these private labs.
And leaving aside the fact that leaves us without a clear and consistent database on the tests, what we really need to be doing in this country is testing the people not raising their hands to be tested.
MADDOW: Yes.
KLAIN: Every person in a nursing home, every person in a senior center, every person with one of these preexisting health conditions, we should be conducting what the public health officials call surveillance. Going out and looking for the disease. Not just waiting for people to show up in their doctors` office and say I need a test and if that doctor can get you to a private lab, you get a test.
MADDOW: If the U.S. government took your advice and decided they`re going to do testing on that scale, could they source tests internationally to literally raise the number of tests in our stockpile that we could use for that kind of purpose?
KLAIN: I mean, it`s a little late in the day for that because those tests are in high demand in other countries too. But we could do more to produce test in this country, could ramp that up and I think there is a decision to largely privatize it and kind of let it solve itself. It`s not going to solve itself.
One difference between our country and other countries is that we have a lot of our seniors in nursing homes. A lot of other countries, they take care of old people in the home. And so, there is a reason to think this disease is worse here than Korea where we have so many people congregated in these nursing centers. Unless we go out and find where the disease is, some -- more and more instances like what we`ve seen in Washington state are going to repeat themselves around the country.
MADDOW: With the kind of epidemiological curve that we are seeing right now in terms of the number of cases, given the caveat that we have no idea how many cases because of the testing, but with the increase that we`re seeing nonetheless, if we are heading toward very large numbers of Americans being infected with this virus, and as Dr. Fauci said, we`re looking at a 15 to 20 percent serious illness rate among those who get infected, should we expect that American hospitals are going to get crushed by a flood of very sick people?
KLAIN: Rachel, we should expect that, and, frankly, not even if we get anywhere near the numbers we were talking about in the last segment. We only have a million hospital beds in this country, 700,000 of them are full with people who are sick right now.
MADDOW: How many hospital beds do we have?
KLAIN: A million.
MADDOW: One million.
KLAIN: Now, of course, people come in and out of them. So, over the course of a year, we hospitalize about 35 million people in the country, but as you said in the last segment also, Rachel, people were hospitalized with this. If you`re serious enough to go to the hospital with this, you`re going to be there for awhile. This isn`t a two-day hospitalization thing. And the problem is this. You know, if you get a crush of cases in a particular city, a city like New York that could be big cities, not just talking about small cities where capacity is limited.
We have limited numbers of ventilators, 65,000 ventilators for the whole country. Almost all of them are at use during flu season. If this really kicks up and creates just even a small increase, we`re going to see hospitals in this country and particular places overwhelmed, and seems like we`re seeing in Italy with people in the hallways, people not being able to get care.
You find in these epidemics around the world almost as many people die not from the epidemic but inability to get health care for other things. People get a chest pain, they don`t go to the hospital because the line is too long or because they`re afraid of getting the virus when they go to the hospital and coronary instances go up.
So, this is going to have effects on our health care system that go beyond even the dramatic effects of the virus itself.
MADDOW: Is it predictable where that`s going to happen? Or does the pandemic terminology not just mean that it`s internationally everywhere, but we should we expect it to be everywhere domestically, as well?
KLAIN: I think we should it to probably be everywhere but not at the same time.
MADDOW: OK.
KLAIN: And I think the problem -- again, one of the problems with the testing, you want intelligence of where it is and where it`s going, and if you don`t have measures, if you look at a map now, Johns Hopkins website, the best map, you see that there are states with many cases and states with zero cases. There aren`t states with zero cases, there are states with zero tests.
MADDOW: Yes.
KLAIN: And so, we don`t really know where it is. We`re fighting an enemy we don`t know where it is.
MADDOW: What could, what should the government do to surge capacity in American hospitals and prep for that now before we see it start to happen? I mean, we`ve all seen these testimonials from Italian doctors, right, talking about the Lombardi region and knowing that it was going to happen because there was a large center of infection in that region and the doctors were prepared for it, they knew it was coming, they still couldn`t do anything to manage the capacity, to manage the ultimate numbers that turned up.
We`re in the position now where we know that`s about to happen, hasn`t started yet. That feels like gold in terms of the time but can we do anything with this time to make sure we can handle it when it happens?
KLAIN: I think we could. One thing I put a star on, we have to watch for a pivot in the Trump administration rhetoric. I think, increasingly, they will say hey, this is a state and local problem. We`re here to provide technical expertise but solving this is up to governors and mayors.
I think they`re going to try to push this problem downward. The federal government does have tools, right? We have FEMA we could use. They`re really good at building things quickly after hurricanes and earthquakes. They might be able to deploy to build temporary hospitals in cities and places that need them. Governors could use the national guard.
MADDOW: Mass units. Hospital tents.
KLAIN: Yes, exactly. That`s again what we do when there is a horrible hurricane or horrible tornado that kind of wipes out a medical facility, FEMA can sometimes do that.
We need to be really creative about it`s going to happen. You see what is going on in Korea. Not just extreme care but testing, drive thru testing to get the testing out of the health care center, protect the personnel, protect you when you`re being tested from being infected by others. We need to be creative.
We`re not really seeing that from the White House. What we`re seeing is kind of vague statements and vague direction but not that kind of push to action.
MADDOW: Did you tonight when you found out the president would give this Oval Office address, did you expect the national disaster declaration?
KLAIN: Well, I read the explanation one way or the other, and it was -- I never bet on what Donald Trump is going to do in any particular --
MADDOW: Would it have been helpful if he did that? There is reporting the president didn`t like the sound of that, essentially, that it contradicted his overall "it`s going to be OK" message.
KLAIN: Look, Rachel, I don`t really call what label he puts on it. He called it a public health emergency three months ago, but hasn`t acted like it`s a public health emergency. He can call it whatever what he wants to call it. He called it a frog for all I care.
The question is, when he wakes up tomorrow morning and the people of the White House wake up tomorrow morning, what are the ten to dos to fight this problem and where are they on the ten to dos at the end of the day? Congress gave them $8 billion last week. How much money is spent in the first five days, first ten days, 20 days? It`s some basics about blocking and tackling. These are fundamentally logistical challenges that require leadership and accountability.
MADDOW: In terms of what`s about to happen next --
KLAIN: Yes.
MADDOW: There`s obviously big stuff we`re thinking about as a country and as part of a global community. Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist, today, wrote a very provocative piece at "Foreign Policy" that was headlined, it`s time to cancel the U.S. presidential campaign. Not the election but the campaign. Obviously, a very striking prospect.
At the other end -- if you turn the telescope around the other way, when I go home from here tonight when all of us turn off the TV tonight and start thinking about how this affects our own lives, we`re thinking about, should I change the way I interact with the elderly people in my life? I don`t think I`m sick. I don`t think I have symptoms. I don`t think I`ve been exposed but should I limit my interactions with older people who I work with or who are part of my family?
I mean, whose best position to give that advice right now and who should we trust?
KLAIN: Well, I absolutely trust Dr. Fauci. I trust the career officials for the Centers for Disease Control, but I worry they are being muzzled by the president forced to soft pedal their advice.
And we know already that Dr. Nancy Messonnier who said, was the first person to say that this was inevitable kind of got sidelined and subjected to a right-wing attack that her brother is Rod Rosenstein and all kind of - -
MADDOW: She`s part of the deep state and that`s the reason why she said it was a serious problem. Yes.
KLAIN: Look, when you have a crisis like this, the deep state is what fights a crisis like this. It`s the men and women permanent government servants, who are people that work with me on the Ebola response, they`re still there. They`re great people, great scientists, great public servants. They need to be turned loose to solve this problem, not distrusted and sidelined.
MADDOW: Let me ask you about one last thing, Ron. You were Vice President Biden`s chief of staff.
KLAIN: Yes.
MADDOW: You know him well. He today announced that he was cancelling events or converting them to virtual campaign events in Florida and I think --
KLAIN: Chicago, yes.
MADDOW: Chicago.
He`s going to give a speech tomorrow on coronavirus. When he made that announcement about his fourth coming event, when he and Senator Sanders cancelled rallies last night in Ohio, the Trump reelection campaign actually came out and attacked them today, saying that he was looking for an excuse to cancel his events and President Trump isn`t going to do that sort of thing.
We just got word a moment ago quote, out of an abundance of caution from the coronavirus outbreak, the president has decided to cancel upcoming events in Colorado and Nevada contributed to White House Spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham.
Is it wise for everybody to cancel everything, for everybody to cancel all events that might have large numbers of people at them?
KLAIN: I think that -- I`m not sure everybody cancelling everything. I think these very large events should be postponed for now until we get a better grip on it.
MADDOW: Especially if they`re not necessary, if they`re optional events, they`re elective large crowds.
KLAIN: I think, you know, I certainly think the very large should be. Look, there is always risk at our society and democracy is important.
And I`m not, you know, I think that we should continue with the presidential campaign. There is a lot of technology to it. There`s a lot of ways for Senator Sanders and Vice President Biden and President Trump to reach voters, to communicate with voters that don`t involve putting large groups of people together. And I think until we have a better grip on where the risks are, better grip on the testings, we know where the disease is, some caution here is advised.
MADDOW: Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, coordinator of the Ebola response in the Obama White House, Ron, thank you for being here.
KLAIN: Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Good to see you.
KLAIN: Elbow bump.
MADDOW: All right. That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow.
Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".
Good evening, Lawrence.
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